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Notes from P. Sainath:
- The very first thing that needs doing: preparing for emergency distribution of our close to 60 million tons of ‘surplus’ foodgrain stocks. And reaching out at once to the millions of migrant workers and other poor devastated by this crisis.
- The very first thing that needs doing: preparing for emergency distribution of our close to 60 million tons of ‘surplus’ foodgrain stocks. And reaching out at once to the millions of migrant workers and other poor devastated by this crisis.
- Declare all presently shut community spaces (schools, colleges, community halls and buildings) to be shelters for stranded migrants and the homeless.
Govts must help, pick up and buy big time, the produce of farmers. Many have been unable to complete the rabi harvest – social distancing and lockdowns being in force. Those who have, can’t transport or sell it anywhere.
... Even for food crop production in the kharif, farmers will need an ecosystem of inputs, support services and marketing assistance.
- The second is to get all farmers to grow food crops in the kharif season. If the present trend persists, a terrible food situation looms. They will not be able to sell cash crops they harvest this season. Going in for more cash crops could prove fatal.
We need to get down to these measures right now. The govt’s ‘package’ is a curious blend of callousness and cluelessness. It’s not just one virus we’re fighting – pandemics are also a ‘package,’ of concerns, and economic distress will drive us from calamity to catastrophe.
... A cure for the coronavirus seems many months away. Meanwhile food stocks will dwindle.
- The govt must be prepared to nationalise private medical facilities across the country. Spain last week nationalised all its hospitals and healthcare providers recognising that a profit-driven system can’t meet this crisis.
- Sanitation workers-safai karamcharis–must be immediately regularised as fulltime employees of the govts / municipalities employing them, with Rs. 5,000 a month added to their existing salaries, and with full medical benefits they have always been denied.
... We spent 30 years further devastating millions of already vulnerable sanitation workers, shutting them out of public service, outsourcing their jobs to private entities – who then re-employed the same workers on contract, at lower wages and with no benefits.
- Declare and rush free rations for three months to the poor.
